Offline worked thank you so much. Uhm but is there any reason why they wouldn't be able to authenticate. I mean your main suspect was norton but it continued to happen after I uninstalled. Do you have any ideas what could be causing it. But the offline authentification worked thank you so much.

It has to be something with the latest windows update. As the trainers I use last night aren't working tonight(keep being told that there is no internet connection on my laptop, which is not true as I type this from the same laptop). So something in the latest 8.1 patch is keeping the trainer from connecting to the web. And I don't have any external anti-virus installed, just the windows defender.

If the Security update is part of the problem, there must be something else you and Spartan have in common. Otherwise, there would be pages of people with the same problem since those security updates went out, not just two of you.

Did you try disabling Windows Defender? I know Neo tested it but, just for drill, do you also have Total Rome 2 installed?